When I arrived at Ivano Frankivsk Airport in the Ukraine in the autumn of 1991, the country had only been independent a few days. Back in Oslo I had wondered where on earth I should go to get a visa for my missionary trip as there were no Ukrainian Embassies yet. The Soviet Union had collapsed, all the constituent Republics had declared independence, including Russia with its capital, Moscow, that had doubled up as the Soviet capital too. The Soviet Embassy had mutated into the Embassy of the Russian Federation so that's where I went hoping they'd know what to do about a Ukrainian visa. They didn't know. Everything inside the Embassy was the same as it had been as in Soviet days with the same banners, portraits of Lenin and President Gorbatchov...and the same paperwork. Of course. That was the reality. Nobody there knew what to do so they just issued me with a Soviet Visa and my passport from that time still bears the stamp of the old Soviet Union...even though it no longer existed.

I had no idea what would happen when I arrived at L'viv Airport because that's where I was going, which only a few days before that it had been called L'vov, and before that it had been called Lwów when it was Polish, and before that it was called Lemberg when it had been Austrian. Only my Aeroflot plane, still with the red Soviet Flag on its tail fin arrived in Ukraine, it touched down in Ivano Frankisvk which days before had been Ivano Frankovsk which before that had been Stanislawów when it had been Polish which before then had been Stanislau when it had been Austrian. So there I am queing up at Immigration in Ivano Frankivsk, in the western part of newly independent Ukraine, with a Soviet visa with hardly any money wondering what on earth would happen. "This is no good!" the passport control officer said in a thick Ukrainian accent, and looked at his colleague with a vacant look on his face. Some Ukrainian words were hurriedly exchanged between the two men and then he said to me, "You cannot enter Ukraine with this." "Well what am I supposed to do?" I asked and went onto explain my dilemma. In the end they stamped my passport with a new visa, demanded a hefty payment which immediately ate up half my budget, and I was let in the country, head spinning, at an aiport I wasn't supposed to be at, almost penniless (they were not pleased when they saw how little tourist spending money I had left), but I was at least in the country...I think.

My hosts had panicked when they turned up at L'viv airport to collect me and were told the airport was closed for some runway repairs and that my flight had been diverted to Ivano Frankivsk, some hours' drive away. Anyway, one of them bussed down to collect me. We had to wait hours for the bus to fill as buses didn't run until they were full back in those days. And full it was - so full, in fact, I, though exhausted from my flights to Stockholm and Warsaw, couldn't even sit down. I had had a hair-raising trip as it was in an old rundown Soviet Antonov turbo-prop aircraft whose wings flapped like a frantic bird, whose plastic drinking cups were so flimsy that the slightest finger pressure in the wrong place meant it collapsing and soaking your pants, never mind the bits of flotsam on the surface, the toilet so filthy I had to force myself to use it. So I was tired. So crushed like sardines on a rickety Soviet bus that tilted so badly I thought it would tip over, we made our way to L'viv over roads littered with potholes, I, an exhaused, improverished missionary in a strange land that hadn't found its feet yet and wondering what to do with its independence. But that's a whole story, nay adventure, in itself.

I tell you this not to get your sympathy or to entertain you but to paint a contrast - a contrast between two entirely different worlds - the world of rich and prosperous Scandinavia where I had travelled from and a world at the same time different culturally but also in major transition. The Ukrainians themselves were in shock, never mind me. They had just won their freedom from communist oppression...at least on paper...for I was to discover during my stay that things, not unexpectedly, has changed little except for the yellow and blue flags, some old timers were wearing the previously banned black uniforms of the old Bandera fascists. There wasn't even a currency and Soviet roubles were no good. Pretty soon black marketeers were swarming around me trying to get my American sollars in exchange for the provisionally issued 'coupons' that looked like Bank of Toyland paper money, so tiny as to look comical. Aside from several attempts to rob me of my cheap Soviet camera, though, I never met a more hospitable and generous people...aside from the morose officials who were still Soviets in their thinking and behaviour. I won't even tell you about the toilet in the government building where I had to register - a hole in the floor and a stenc that would turn the most ironclad stomach.

Contrasts. Now I come from the Far East, as you know, which was not only very different back in the 50's and 50s to what it is like today but radically different from the Europe I would one day go home to. Or was it home? I still don't really know the answer to that question. My Malaysian homeland was a country of many different racial, religious and cultural groups who all got on famously together in spite of their differences. That's, sadly, all changed now too but that's another matter. Unlike today's insane 'politically correct' world where you are forced to accept different cultures with social penalties if you don't, back then we just did it because it was the decent thing to do. There were many languages, many marriage practices, tremendous variety in cuisine, but a shared understanding that everyone needed to get on, that no one group was 'better' than another, and that we needed to simply 'live and let live'. It was very agreeable, my experience of life was rich and stress-free. I can remember no negative experiences growing up in Malaysia. I was carefree and happy. The climate was agreeable, everything was agreeable. All that changed when we came 'home' to England to a disagreeable climate, bland food and to a way of life that was completely foreign to me. I was as brown as an Asian in those day, thanks to the tropical sun, my feet hard as leather (which astonished my school mates no end) and I knew nothing of the decadent world of pop music, had never seen a TV, and was rapidly disillusioned when I picked up my first handful of snow to find it wasn't soft and fluffy as the pictures had once led me to believe. And I was cold, so cold, and went down with one illness after another. England did not suit me at all. I, the white Asian, was homesick, and it took me many years to adjust to and settle in the West.

A couple of days ago I posted in Facebook to say that it would be the Sabbath the next day and the day after it would be New Year's Day. An East African friend commended, to the effect, that that sounded 'strange' and 'weird'. I had to smile because 'two day's time' - today - wasn't the 1st of January but the 10th of March...and next year it will be on a different day, as will the sabbath be in a month's time. You see, she was used to an entirely different calendar routine or endless weekly sabbaths every seven days without fail (for her, every Sunday, for others, every Saturday) and New Year fell in the middle of the winter...well, I guess it wouldn't be 'winter' exactly for my friend in Africa and that once again highlighted climate differences. When I was a boy in Malaysia we Europeans celebrated 25 December like everyone else around us, our Moslem, Hindu and Buddhist friends joined in, and we joined in their festivals, a bit like modern Singapore where I was born. There were no Christmas trees because pine trees don't grow in the tropics so you either used a tacky-looking pastic one or, if you were like my father, built one of your own out of wood which we continued to use even after we came back to England because my father rightly objected, in my view, to the shedding of pineneedles all over the his carpets as the hapless tree became dessicated and died.

For the last 2½ years we have been studying the Book of Revelation and taking pauses only for the annual and monthly festivals, the occasional special message and a break from preaching altogether when I simply got too exhausted. It's been a routine for us for so long that getting used not studying Revelation may feel a little strange at first, even though today is New Moon Day - Chag Sameach Rosh Chodesh, by the way, and a Happy New Year! Today is the first day of the first month called Aviv (the only Hebrew month with an actual Hebrew name and not one of the pagan Babylonian ones which the Jews adopted during their exile, nor merely a number) which means the 'month of blossoms', and even though it's not quite spring here yet in Sweden, we're getting there little by little. We are a little early this year owing to the timing of the Spring Equinox so it will be spring in the Holy Land in a few days' time. So someone coming in our front door and hearing us singing 'Silent Night' (as we did in German just a short while ago) or other carol would likewise think something very strange was going on because wasn't Christ born on 25 December, on 'Christmas Day'? No He wasn't. He was born in the spring. 'You mean your're celebrating 1 January and 25 December on 10 March???' you might ask. Now that does sound weird, doesn't it?

And that's the whole point I'm trying to make. Nothing in this sin-drenched, lie-infested world is as it seems to be, so when the New Jerusalem comes to earth at the Second Coming, and with it a new Heavenly Adminstration, all the new and unfamiliar laws, festivals, holy days, sabbaths, etc. are going to seem very strange indeed to the vast majority of inhabitants of the world who have survived the Great Tribulation, so strange they will be tempted to think that something is very definitely wrong.

Let me give you another illustration. Back in my childhood in Asia we wouldn't bat an eyelid if a Moslem Malay friend brought his several wives with him to a party in our home, or if a Chinese Buddhist friend brought his wife one time and his concubine the next time, or if a Hindu Tamil friend shunned cutlery and ate with his fingers during a meal. It didn't bother us because we knew we all had to get on together in a very multi-racial society indeed. We were not racistrs and skin colour didn't bother any but a tiny few who were shamed into silence. When we went to their weddings and religious festivals - to Ramadan and stuffed ourselves like pigs in the evening, or to a 20 course Chinese dinner at which you could be served octopus and steamed monkey brains still in their skulls, it didn't bother the adults at least because they had seen it all before...for us children, well, we were admittedly a little more squeamish.

Those of us of the last colonial generation learned to be broad-minded and were far more tolerant than this mean-spirited, aggressive and often downright nasty 'woke' generation. We cancelled no-one, there was no vulgar parading of sin, we personally knew homosexuals and lesbians and treated them the way the Russians still do whose philosophy is, basically, what you do behind closed doors in your home is your own business, just don't parade it in public so as to offend other communities. Nobody was demonstrative or immature about life and we needed no psychopathic, mentally dysfunctional Marxists or corporate fascists with impaired psychological functionality to police us as they do today. We recognised differences for what they were, agreed to disagree about things in a civil manner, and learned to get on without any sort of political coersion being applied. Nobody felt any need to be 'affirmed' by anyone else the way liberals do to today. Nobody 'cancelled' anyone else and simply gave disageeable people a wide berth. That's the only way you can run a country with minimum fallout in a post-Edenic world.

I guess what I am saying is that immediate post-colonial Malaysia worked successfully, most everyone was happy, and the more disruptive, radical elements were contained. I lived during what was called the 'Emergency' when communists tried to violently impose their ideology on the majority unwilling. I had some narrow brushes with death myself as a boy on at least three occasions thanks to terrorist activity. So aside from the extremists who were a tiny minority (radical Moslems, communists, fascists and others), different religious and moderate political groups - conservatives, liberals and social democrats for the most part - all got along. But that's yet another story.

The point is, I grew up familiar with all of this diversity that had no need of any dystopian Marxist 'progressivism'. People like myself saw first hand, all the time, how others lived, and whether we agreed with them or not, we didn't make a fuss. So when I became an educator and started my own tutorial college in Oxford, and the Moslem father of one of my students from Kano or Joss (I can't remember which city now) in northern Nigeria turned up with three of his wives and unashamedly introduced them to me, upbraiding me for my British prejudices and wrongly assuming I would be provoked, I had to chuckle because I was used to this sort of thing and it didn't phase me. Indeed, my father who once lived in Nigeria and what is now Tanzania, told me all about life there when I was a youth, as my mother did of her experiences in India, Hong Kong and Macau. So I know a thing or two about different cultures. Nor was I offended when an Indian Sikh friend from Malaysia came visiting us in England after we had left Malaysia, unwrapped his turban, and washed his hair in the bath tub - hair that wend practically down to his knees. Out of consideration for our carpets he went out into the garden and into the sun to dry it off even though the neighbours were rudely peering over our fence and out of their upper windows staring at him as though he were a freak. It didn't bother him as it might some chronically over-sensitive moderns, he laughed our native English prejudices off in good humour as a wise man should. For us it was normal. We had lots of Sikh friends. Besides, we loved old Santok Singh of Kuala Lumpur, he was always a good family friend and taught me when I was little the mystery of his disappearing pens. Like the fastidious Hercule Poirot who wore a moustache-net at night in Agatha Christie's famous detective stories, Santok kept his biros in a net behind his beard that he wore by day! It saved him having to use pockets, I guess.

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not some liberal preaching that we should passively acknowledge sinful behaviour as acceptable - certainly not. I'm as conservative as they come. Personally I am appalled at the cruelty of some Asians against dogs, which they happen to eat too, or all the unkosher things Chinese, Koreans and others buy in their wet markets and call 'food'. We are not in any case to judge unbelievers, that's Yahweh's business. Nor do I judge Mr. Singh's fabulously long shock of hair even though we as male believers are forbidden to grow our hair long (1 Cor.11:14-16). It's an apostolic rule that applies to all believers everywhere. But it's no concern of mine what unbelievers do with their hair. I furthermore don't interfere in the way they raise their children. It's none of my business because it's their stewardship providing they aren't physically, sexually or emotionally abusing them which the law is supposed to protect them from. We are commanded to be at peace with our neighbour wherever possible (Mt.5:9; Rom.12:18; Jas.3:17-18). Provided they don't try to force me to be a certain way or force me to raise my children differently from the way I believe, I am mostly not concerned. I don't want to be a petty, interfering busybody.

The world we live in isn't fair, or righteous, and a day is coming when Elohim (God) will set all of that to rights as we have been learning in the Book of Revelation. Our business is to live peacefully with our neighbour for as long as we are allowed to and to to witness of the Gospel, and not try to create political and social Utopias that cannot work. Living peacefully with ones neighbour is, admittedly, becoming harder and harder as our 'progressive', Satanist-steered Marxist-Corporate Fascist society becomes more and more intolerant, and it's clear the writing is on the wall: we are, at some point, as the Bible tells us, going to be forced to live separately for our own safety and well-being when people refuse to get along as we all did in Malaysia as I was growing up. It'll not be by choice that we will do that, but out of the necessity to survive and prosper. And in some countries believers are already being forced to make this move.

One of my callings is to prepare those who are willing to listen to get ready not just for the the New World that's coming when Christ returns but to teach the Remnant in advance how to do it because they must become the teachers, administers and rulers of that new, millennial world when all the existing governments are finally swept away, literally in a day.

Most Christians and Messianics never pause to think how that's going to actually happen...practically-speaking. A country without a government soon descends into lawlessness and anarchy. Governments need to be replaced....and quickly...and by people who know what they're doing. Who in the churches is ready to do that, let alone has the knowledge how the heavenly system works? Certainly not those who don't know or live by Heavenly Father's Law or Torah because they:

• A. Have got used to the idea of secular governments running their countries for them; and
• B. have no idea what Yahweh's Legal System and Way of Life looks like.

Go and ask any Christian or Messianic from any number of denominations and they are all going to tell you differently how it is to be done. All they know is the system they were brought up in. Moreover, those who actually know any history will be looking to the past for inspiration, like Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Europe, or Calvin's Geneva or Luther's Germany or goodness what else. You won't find unity in the Body. You will find, and get if any one group tries to implement its vision, is chaos. Even the Messianics haven't much of a clue because their ideas have been shaped by the Talmudic Judaism of the Rabbis and their Pharisee forefathers with its Christless system.

Here's the shocker for most of you: the government of the New Jerusalem and the nations is nothing like the past or the present because nothing like it has existed since the City of Melchizedek back in the days of the Patriarchs, and even then that was not the fullness (remember what I taught you about 'fullness' yesterday). I have been shown both Melchizedek's City of old, how Heaven is governed, the Pre-mortal world, and got my first glimpse yesterday of the inner workings of the Holy City. They are nothing like anything man knows about. And I am not just talking about organisation - that's just the vessel or 'shell' - but the whole phronema or spirit of the place, the nature and quality of the relationships, the way marriage works there, the way families interact, and the whole theocratic system. And I have had my own personal surprises and shocks along the way.

For instance, my wife likes me clean-shaven for the most part so when I got a vision of myself and two other brothers in the millennium, I got a shock, because I must admit I find cleanshavenness more appealing, at least in hot weather, so I guess I'm ambivalent. Now I know some messianics are quite fanatical about beards just as the Mormons are fanatical about not having them, but I'll not get into that today. We are free to choose. You see, in the vision, not only was I wearing a very bushy beard but I was wearing a head turban as well and robes that made me look like something out of the old Ottoman Empire! So were my two colleagues. But there it was. That's what I looked like. A little thing for some, maybe, but for those who prefer the old Roman and Egyptian ways, well, that might be a little challenging. But I must emphasise, that's a minor matter.

Now I told you earlier of some of my experiences with Moslem Malays and Northern Nigerians and even though the way they are living it is wrong, they are at least prepared for what's coming when plural family relationships are fully restored. Westerners are not. I can still remember the confusion when President Zuma of South Africa turned up for a state visit to the United Kingdom with some of his wives, for as you may remember, he is a Zulu for whom that is a common practice. British protocol became a shambles because heads of state are usually only accompanied by a single spouse. And though I am quite sure the British Royal family didn't even bat an eyelid, the liberal élites were appalled though they were more afraid of being called racist than anything else since Zuma is black, so they held their tongues and let the matter slip. I've said it before, and I have said it again, plural families are the norm in the Holy City, not the Western, Roman way. And again as I have said, this rubs against centuries of engrained Western prejudice and secular egalitarian notions of 'equality', but that can't be helped. It is what it is and will be what it already is. Best we adjust to it now rather than find ourselves on the wrong side of prophetic history.

Clothing is very different in the Holy City too. The Book of Revelation, speaking as it does of 'white robes', is conveying things symbolically only. There is plenty of colour. Not only that, but the clothing of the First Resurrection qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones) isn't linen but light and only those who are allowed to (like married persons) can see through that light. I was shown this decades ago in a vision. Of course, those Rulers sent out to govern the nations outside the Holy City dress in linen like everyone else there, but once again there is a code which is neither 'liberal' nor 'conservative' as we understand those terms. In the ancient City of Salem before the time of the Jebusites in the days of Melchizedek (to whom Abraham paid tithes), we learn that the code was basic:

"And behold, our dress was simple, that the heart might not boast nor the eye exalt itself, for we were a people of one mind and one heart..." (3 Abr.9:2).

In the Millennium the kosher food laws and as I have taught in the now ended Book of Revelation course, there will eventually (if not immediately) be a fruit-and-nut diet with such variety to choose from you will not be able to comprehend it for its rich diversity. Remember there is a difference between the way the Children of the First Resurrection live and the way mortals outside the Holy City live and the way mortals inside the Holy City live.

Now we could talk about so many different things like education, IT, and things like that but there isn't time. Today I simply wanted to remind you of some things and to prepare you for others. We will be shiting from a purely urban or a purely agrarian way of life to a new integrated, Garden-City reality as represented by this year's Eden-Astara logo. The Remnant, as it gathers, must start learning and implementing this new spiritual way of life. That is a condition of gathering but believres will continue to be free to choose 'outside' ways if they prefer it. We have a few decades left but as of today, we need to start gradually implemeting more of the Holy City Ways and at the very least start getting to be mentally and emotionally familiar with them. I admit changing diet is going to be a tough one for me personally, as my family knows all too well, for others it will be getting used to larger families, for others living together communally and sharing resourses. None of these things can, or ought to, be forced but must come together through Ruach-saturated teaching and simply living in close proximity to that we want to eventually imitate. Such prejudices as remain - and they remain strong in the Body - will slowly dissolve away as society itself changes in the opposite direction and leaving us to make stark choices.

So this is how I thought I would preface the New Year - regard it as a new 'Epilogue', a very rough and crude 'statement of intent'. How everything unfolds this year will depend on a number of factors but change things will. I hope that this has stimulated you to start moving in the direction of the Remnant. I have been urging people to gather out of the cities now for some time as Western economies - but also global economies - stagnate and eventually collapse. There is also the very real danger of a world war. Already the kind of demographic problem spoken of in Isaiah 4:1 is happening in the Ukraine with so many men having been needlessly slaughtered (over half a million at the last count) on the altars of pagan gods. Ukraine is, sadly, but the beginning of rapid and sometimes violent change. My heart goes out to the Ukrainians who have been needlessly slaughtered and who face a devastated economy and national life. I was there with them when they went through their previous big change from communism to democracy and to corporate capitalism, oligarchy, corruption, bloodshed, anarchy and slavery. The world has a lot of re-thinking and re-evaluating to do, believers praying and studying Scripture even more so. Our comfort zones are fast vanishing and we must start getting used to change of all kinds. The familiar landmarks are gone. Now we must live by the Ruach (Spirit) or perish. And please don't forget to prep while you still can though it's getting harder and harder as inflation worsens and jobs become more scarce.

With that said I once again pray a Blessed New Year to you all and invite you to pay close attention to what Yahweh is doing here in the days to come. The door is open to serious investigators. Yahweh bless. Amen.

Further Reading

[1] A Glimpse into Heaven: My Life Story and How I Came to Know Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) - The Testimony of the Founder of NCAY

Comments from Readers

[1] "Good sermon. I enjoyed it very much. Thank you!" (MLP, Canada, 10 March 2024)